Postgame: Twins are missing Plouffe's offense

It wasn't a good night for Eduardo Escobar, and in fact, it hasn't been a great month for him. When the Twins were here in Kansas City in April, Escobar was the Twins' hottest hitter. He went 3-for-4 with an opposite-field home run on April 9, raising his average to .545.

But since April 26, the hits have dried up. Escobar, who went 0-for-4 with a walk on Wednesday, is 6-for-63 in his last 24 games, an .095 average. He led off again, too, something that hasn't worked well for him: Escobar is 3-for-27, or .111, in the six games this season that he has been atop the batting order.

In fact, the Twins may be missing Trevor Plouffe even more than they expected, because neither Escobar or Jamey Carroll has been hitting lately. Since Plouffe was kneed in the head by Dan Uggla on May 21 and went on the disabled list, Twins' third basemen have combined to go 7-for-60, or .117, with one double and one RBI.

-- For all the base runners tonight -- there were 29 in all, 15 of them Twins -- it sure was a snoozer of a game. I guess 11 walks, plus a combined 3-for-19 record with runners in scoring position, will do that.
In fact, of the game's five runs, only one (Salvador Perez in the first inning) was scored by a runner who reached base via a hit.

The rest got on base via a walk, or in the case of Eric Hosmer, by a fielding error. And the Royals' final run, an insurance score in the seventh inning, was a gift from the Twins. Josh Roenicke, who had not surrendered a run in his last eight innings (over seven appearances), walked Perez, the first batter he faced, with two outs. A wild pitch moved Kansas City's catcher to second base, and Billy Butler, after fouling off several pitches to run the count to 3-2, sliced a single to center to score Perez.

It ended up not mattering, since Kansas City's bullpen didn't allow a run in its three innings of work, but it still made the Twins' task a little more difficult.

Phil Miller covered three seasons of Twins baseball, but that was at a different ballpark for a different newspaper. Now Miller returns to the baseball beat after joining the Star Tribune as the Gopher football writer in 2010, and he won't miss the dingy dome for a minute. In addition to the Twins and Gophers, Miller covered the Utah Jazz and the NBA for six years at The Salt Lake Tribune.